A True Fan: It's More than a Ceiling Fixture
by Karen Williams | June 23, 2005
Seminole Chronicle
Sometimes I worry about this country. It seems that the things we should revere are on their way to ho-humsville. I refer primarily to professional basketball.
I recently asked various people if they watched the NBA play-offs between Detroit and San Antonio on TV. The guys indicated they were too busy channel surfing to settle down with one show. Talk about commitment phobes!
The women, on the other hand, responded with enthusiasm until they realized I was talking sports and not a reality show sponsored by the National Botox Association.
I'm appalled at such indifference and confusion, perhaps because I come from Indiana, where babies are born wearing basketball sneakers (size extra-extra small) and where their first words are "Larry Bird." For us Hoosiers (note famous movie of the same name), basketball is right up there with God, country and mom's microwaved apple pie.
Unlike football, basketball is quasi-understandable - as five players on either side try in turn to hurl a round ball through a hoop while the other team aggravates and distracts them. Anyone who attempts to get something accomplished with young children around grasps the challenge of this sport.
Basketball is fast moving and exciting, as all ten very tall people race up and down the court and sweat like there's no tomorrow. Contrast that with baseball, which has been called "three minutes of action crammed into three hours."
The most compelling part of basketball is the suspense. Will he make a basket? Will he foul a player from the opposite team? Will he beat the shot clock? Will he yell at the ref? Will his salary be a zillion-gazillion dollars this year?
But beyond the thrills, basketball has deeply influenced our society. Let's explore a few of its messages:
1) Bald is beautiful. So many players shave their heads that the look has become acceptable and appealing. Comb-overs are out. Chrome domes are in. This is for you, Homer Simpson.
2) Show your emotions. One has only to see an NBA coach pacing, gesturing and tantruming on the sidelines to know that stuffing a basketball is good but stuffing your feelings isn't.
3) Guys don't wear short-shorts. In days of old, NBA players wore skimpy shorts, but as the salaries got bigger, the shorts got longer - now down to the knee. Perhaps they can afford more polyester these days, or perhaps they're impishly stealing fabric from the team dancers.
4) Drink Gatorade. Throughout each game, NBA players gulp Gatorade. If some of the fittest and richest people on the planet guzzle this concoction, why are we lesser mortals drinking bottled water and Sunny D? Gatorade was, of course, originally formulated at the University of Florida. The school that gave the world Faye Dunaway, Bob Vila, Buddy Ebsen and my son Smitty-the-Mathematician surely knows a thing or two about quenching a thirst.
We in the Orlando area need not confine our basketball experience to the couch and remote, for we have the makings of a fine NBA team here. I'll see you at T.D. Waterhouse Centre this autumn to cheer on the Magic and laugh at the antics of team mascot "Stuff." The sausage dogs aren't half-bad either. And the Magic Dancers perform beautifully - not quite like I myself could do, but I refuse to go out on the floor and make other people feel inferior.
Watch more basketball. Do it for yourself. Do it for society. Do it for the sausage dogs. Just do it.
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Copyright 2005, Karen Williams
